"Not enough work for everyone" is stupid

Even before the economy was in trouble some people were starting to paint a dark picture about our future: With the gains in productivity that we have managed to achieve by introducing new technologies and machines we”ll be needed less work in the future. This will leave many people without jobs because “there just isn”t enough work for everybody”.

While the analysis ain”t wrong, the conclusion is so let me outline why that is. But first we have to clarify some definitions:

Work is anything a person does that is aimed at the result. If the result doesn”t matter, it”s not work. “To matter” in this respect has nothing to do with money or something being “serious”: If you add an entry about your favourite Monkey Island Character to the Wikipedia that is work. If you keep some old dialect alive by writing old poems down, that is work. If you clean your house, that is work.

A Job is something that you are paid to do. That”s all there is to it. Results don”t matter, what you do doesn”t matter: If somebody pays you, you”ve got a job.

We”ve gotten used to separating what we call “free time” and “work time”: When you”re not at “work” (not work as we defined it above) whatever you do is your own thing and not “work”.

This whole notion is stupid for a very simple reason: We”ve gotten used to mix up the words “job” and “work”.

In the future there might not be jobs for everybody, at least not jobs as we know them now: Where somebody pays you to do something that you wouldn”t do if nobody paid you. Many of those jobs will die because machines can do them better and cheaper than human beings.

So are we doomed?

No. Because there”s a lot of work out there waiting to be done. Work that we all want to be done. But work that no single entity is willing to pay for. Let me give you an example.

We all benefit from having the Wikipedia updated by experts. But who would pay someone to fix the Wikipedia? No company has any real interest in it (except for those that try to falsify the entry of their clients/bosses). On the other hand we have people that studied history working as taxi drivers. That doesn”t make sense. Why don”t we (as in we the people via our government) pay those people to use their skills to produce something that we all benefit from.

Here in Germany we have something called “Sozialhilfe”. It means that when you just can”t get a job, the state gives you enough to survive (well in fact it”s often not really enough but that”s a different discussion). On the other hand we spend huge amounts of cash to give a feeling of self esteem to those people so they are motivated to get a new job (because many people that have to live of social services are depressed and feel cast out and left alone). Those programs try to train the people that depend on social services to being good worker drones. Why don”t we change that?

Instead of burning money by making people do stuff they don”t care about, why don”t we offer to really pay people out of our pockets (“our” as in “we” as in “via our government”)? If there”s someone who studied philosophy but cannot get a job, why don”t we make that person put his or her skills to use? That person could offer to start cleaning up the Wikipedia or build a specialized Wiki just for Philosophy. If someone can fix bicycles really well but can”t get a job, why don”t we pay him to give courses for fixing bikes?

The people without jobs still have a huge amount of different and very interesting skills. It”s just stupid to let them go to waste. Everybody can do something and if we offered to pay people a basic wage (and not just what social services give out, I mean a wage that makes them realize that we value their input) we”d start getting a lot of extra services, knowledge and content into the public domain.

I”m not saying that people should get rich that way but we”d solve a few problems that we seem to have a hard time with lately:

We get work done that”s useful for the public.

We give a feeling of self esteem to people that might not “function” in the private sector.

We”d raise the value of work.

Especially the last point is relevant here: If you can get a somewhat decent paycheck for doing something for the public, why would you work in crappy jobs that you don”t like, that don”t motivate you and that don”t pay more? The value of an hour of work would raise and we”d stop having people who work 40 hours or more a week that still can”t pay their rent.

Whoever wants more money that the basic package the state can offer there”s the private sector where you can earn a lot more money but the jobs might suck. It”s a tradeoff but in the end we”d all profit.